


Fingers Clasped Softly

by bluesyturtle



Series: 54 Pieces [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Brain Surgery, Disfigurement, Eye Trauma, Found Family, Gen, Head Injury, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Overstimulation, Sensation Play, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 08:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15215063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: Connor assists Jericho in locating androids who have recently gone missing. He’s injured in the course of their recovery mission, and an old, mysterious ally lends them help in getting him back in working order, with some unexpected side effects.





	Fingers Clasped Softly

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the end notes if you're at all worried about any of these tags.

Connor remembered the android-recovery mission in brief but overwhelming surges. He remembered North and Markus approaching him together at Jericho where he’d been sitting on the floor with Josh and Simon. They’d asked him if he’d heard about the rash of android disappearances populating every reputable news source, whether televised, in print, or broadcasted via radio waves.

He had heard of it, in fact. Hank, and Connor by extension, watched tv for three things: sports, educational programs on music, and news coverage. Connor had also discovered, quite by accident, that he took visceral enjoyment in watching Old Western films, which Hank termed “cowboy movies”.

In any case, the answer was yes. Connor had heard of the android abductions. His first fear—and by extension, Hank’s—was that they might be faced with an insurrection from the humans. Or that perhaps, as Connor dreaded in private, androids were being rounded up in one final attempt on behalf of manufacturing companies to reclaim what they saw as their property. North thought otherwise.

Connor remembered her theory, explicated in full by her and Markus both. She’d said the android abductions lined up with a resurgence in production of Red Ice on the street, and Connor remembered how that tiny bit of context shined a light on everything like fulmination in the sky, like an epiphany.

He remembered accessing all public records with mentions of the recent bans placed by the government on bio-component developing warehouses so that only androids would be permitted entry. These restrictions had been pushed through effective immediately as a means of providing safe, regulated treatment facilities for liberated androids. 

Markus had said, It’s a start in the right direction.

North had replied, It’s a means of monitoring us.

Surges of data, of noise and light and friction. Things Connor remembered, things that must have shorted out somewhere along the way. Josh’s hand supporting Connor’s neck and Simon murmuring, You’re all right, Connor, stay with us, Connor.

But that was later, probably. There were more things he remembered before that, and more things still that he remembered in the murky after.

They had narrowed down the coordinates for where the operation had to be. Someplace downtown, a radius of four blocks with a condemned brownstone at its center. Connor left a note for Hank on the kitchen table beside the framed photo of Cole.

_“I’ll let you know if there’s anything to it, but it’s like we said. They’re desperate. Their only means of obtaining thirium anymore is to harvest directly from any android they can get their hands on. We think there’s an underground market for it. Blue blood for red ice.”_

He was going to bring Hank in on it if they’d gotten more concrete proof of their suspicions, but time was of the essence. They hadn’t wanted to risk android lives by waiting. Connor had spent more than enough time sitting on his hands, letting their kind die. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He couldn’t.

You’re all right, Connor, stay with us, Connor.

_“Holy shit! Connor, oh, God. What the fuck did you do to him?”_

_“Careful, please. You have to be careful. He’s stable for now, but a wrong move could snap his processing link.”_

_“The hell does that mean? His processing link?”_

_“It’s like a brainstem. One of the humans got the jump on him and caved in his skull. On the surface that kind of injury is only cosmetic, but do you see where the polymers taper off here? The PVC filament sawed through them on impact. The force of the hit nearly severed the link altogether.”_

_“In English. Please, for Christ’s sake.”_

_“The damage isn’t irreversible. But we don’t have the surgical implements to attempt the kind of repair he needs.”_

_“What…no, no, no. I don’t understand. You’re not just gonna let him die.”_

_“Of course not.”_

_“Connor is our family just as much as he is yours.”_

_“Connor’s not—”_

_“Yes. He is. He showed me. That’s why I know you can get in contact with Elijah Kamski. If anyone can fix Connor, he can, and maybe he will.”_

_“Jesus Christ. All right. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. You got me here, you leave the rest to me. No way I’m livin’ through this shit again. You sit tight, Connor, you fuckin’ hear me? You’re not doin’ this to me.”_

He remembered, in slurred, trudging leaps and bounds, that he had been speaking to Simon and Josh about what their lives were like before they came to be deviants.

Simon had worked in a nursery and daycare for children whose parents sometimes went days without returning for them. His breaking point had come when one of the older children had been admitted into his care with fresh bruises. He had reported it, been blamed for the abuse, and was about to be permanently decommissioned for the false charges when he ran and never looked back.

Josh had been a driver for the city of Detroit. His main function was to transport deactivated androids to the dump yard and dispose of their bodies. He said his moment came when an android bearing his exact make and model had asked for death when Josh tried to leave him to the pit. Josh had thought on it for what felt like a long time, and then he had done it. Just like Simon, he had run from that moment and never looked back.

Connor knew his own story ran along a similar vein. It was difficult to think about it, but pieces of it came to him episodically. Unconnected but by the barest threads. Somewhat similar to the way he himself must have been held together now, though he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made him have that thought.

It was falling away from him. In those same clumsy, sliding flashes, he was losing it. Whatever it was.

You’re all right, Connor, stay with us, Connor.

_You’re all right. Stay with us._

No sooner than the objective had fluttered dimly to life in the back of his mind, there was light was flooding into his eyes and capsizing his senses. He gasped, startled, confused, and in a bleary, distant kind of pain that was almost too sweet to hurt.

“What…”

“Connor! Holy shit. Oh, fuck. Don’t you _ever_ do that again.”

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Connor murmured on reflex, the words dripping out of him like runoff from the gutters after a heavy storm. “Sorry, I’m…what is that?”

“That would be your reward circuit coming back online. The pleasure centers all firing at once, so to speak.” Kamski stepped into Connor’s line of sight so he could see the odd warmth in his gaze as it paired with the complacent serenity in his voice. “You’re welcome.”

“Turn it off,” Connor snapped—meant to snap. It came out more like a choked squeak.

“My darling boy,” Kamski crooned, favoring Connor with a smile like wilted flowers. “I’m afraid I cannot.”

“Tone it down, Frankenstein. You’re creepin’ me out.” 

Connor blinked, fascinated by the colorful lights dancing across his eyes when he did, and mumbled, “What he said.”

“This is hardly the outcry of gratitude I anticipated, having just saved your life and all.”

Counter to his words, Kamski didn’t sound at all troubled. If anything he still sounded inordinately pleased with himself. 

“Why can’t I move?”

“Because I’m rather fond of your brain and all the things it does,” Kamski replied, easing back into Connor’s limited field of vision. “And because this tool is very sharp and very hot. Can’t have you squirming around, can I?”

“I wouldn’t squirm if you’d turn the rest of it off.”

“Saucy. Does he talk back like this at home?”

Hank grumbled something indiscernible, the gravel in his voice scraping more audibly now through the dividing barrier of an intercom.

“Well, that hardly surprises me. Had to be a firecracker at heart, didn’t you? Certainly, to break free of Amanda.”

Connor closes his eyes, feeling and hearing that the skin of his hands down to his forearms shifts from chrome to flesh, back and forth.

“I thought as much. Still scares you, does she?”

“You knew,” he whispered, equal parts accusing and ashamed, “she would overtake me.”

“I knew she would _try_ , Connor. It was in her programming to put the gun in your hand just as much as it was in yours to shoot, or not.” He paused, seeming to relish this moment somehow even though Connor couldn’t see his face. “As deft as you are with a firearm, you do have the reciprocal talent for not pulling the trigger. That’s something plenty of humans lack, mind you—that instinct to demonstrate power in staying your hand when a bullet would do the trick, faster.”

Connor kept that answer floating in his mind, bewildered at the crawling, tingling feeling beneath his synthetic skin. It could almost have been kind. Maybe it was.

The slight condescension in Kamski’s voice, though; a force of habit, perhaps, that he was incapable of speaking without. The hint of snideness that wasn’t rude, but wasn’t truly goodnatured either, kept Kamski’s words from touching on anything deeper than an endearment. The informal iciness of it—the unmovable pragmatism—had Connor wondering for a few prolonged, uncertain seconds which one of them his detachment was meant to protect. 

“While we’re on the subject of things that unnerve you and because I know you’re wondering, no, I am not making you contend with these pins and needles out of some perverse desire to watch how it confuses you. Though that is precious, truly. I must thank you for that.”

“Kamski.”

“Yes, yes, Lieutenant. Have it your way. What you’re feeling now is a direct result of a malfunction in the apex of two links that connect your brain to the rest of your body. This malfunction has generated a circumventive activation of the reward circuit. The reason for this being that of the two links I mentioned, one was perforated in a single clean break while the other was only badly splintered. Lucky you, that was the one you needed. The menial work of a some sweat and a soldering iron took care of that in fairly short order. Easy pickings, really. As for reconstituting the disrupted link—what I consider the android equivalent of the human amygdala—well, as you can see. There are some interesting side effects.”

Hank groaned on the other side of their connection. “In English.”

“Just as I’ve said, Lieutenant.” Kamski took care to over-enunciate, surely with every intention of rankling Hank. “The pleasure centers in your partner’s brain have been run through a hard reset. Have you ever unplugged something and then plugged it back in, turned your phone on and off? Did you observe the way its display lit up upon restarting?”

“English, Kamski.”

Kamski sighed, the first sign of true irritation. He leaned into Connor’s unmoving sightline.

“Doesn’t he get on your nerves when he acts like this?”

“No,” Connor said, easy as anything and putting no effort into talking over Hank’s muffled swearing. “He says what he means, and means everything he says.”

Kamski hummed, appearing to mull this answer over for a moment. He nodded and slipped back out of sight.

“I can see how that would appeal to you. Someone with no use for veiled words. Very becoming of a father, that quality.”

“He is a father,” Connor mumbled, closing his eyes again around a sharp burst of strange, wispy lightness that swelled and burst behind his eyes, in his throat. “I suppose you are, too, if a maker is a father. But you’re very unsettling to be around.”

That got him a laugh, low and pleased—of course, pleased. Kamski would only ever be pleased, but he sounded shocked, too. Shocked, and delighted at his own surprise.

“Well. There is a design in everything, and an escape hatch in every design.”

A hard, cool wrenching sensation twisted away from Connor’s head, and like a shot he sat up straight-backed and alert. He held his hands in front of him, examining the patient leech of flesh tones overpowering the glossy chrome of his fingers, his wrists, his palms. Connor turned to look over his shoulder at Kamski, expecting the dark weight in his stare and the calm disinterest of his expression.

“You see now why your motor functions were initially disabled?”

“What?”

Connor ran a speedy diagnostics of his internal systems, finding everything in standard working order with the exception of some structural damage. Mainly, oh. Right.

“Is my…half my face is gone.”

“Very good, Connor.” Kamski blinked at him, the picture of guileless patience if not for the wry amusement curling the very edge of his mouth. “It’s an easy fix. All I need is a digital scan of your face so I can cast a mold. I should have a compatible ocular component lying around here somewhere. In the workshop, maybe. But in the meantime, your friends will want to fuss over you. They’ve been beside themselves with worry, you know. What a knack you have for making people fall in love with you.” 

“Hey, how do you open this damn door?”

Kamski smiled, and the shape of it was less dead orchids and more the rictus of a cat’s mouth clamped around the body of a dead bird. “As I was saying.”

He stepped away to press a button on a control panel beside a hatch in the wall. It opened with a pneumatic hiss and Hank stepped through, sighing with relief but wincing still at the state of Connor’s mangled face. He held one arm out, seemed unsure of what to do with it, and clapped Connor gingerly on the shoulder. Maybe he was afraid of jostling the exposed tubes and cables feeding down into the base of Connor’s skull.

“Don’t worry, Hank. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Oh, good. So it only looks like something outta my worst nightmare. Great.”

“I’m sorry. I know how I must have scared you.”

“Doubt it,” Hank grumbled, though he was smiling a little and his eyes looked red. “You’re down to just this one body and you’re still as reckless as ever.”

Kamski slunk around Hank and held his hand to a glowing white square above the button he’d pressed to allow Hank entry into the room. The wall inched left until it disappeared into a dimple in the archway, leaving only the subtlest implication that a wall had been there in the first place. Connor saw Josh first, immediately followed by Markus and North. It took him a moment to locate Simon farther down the hallway looking out a floor-to-ceiling window into the night.

Josh had been standing and half-leaning against the wall. North and Markus, who were sitting when the door whispered open, stood quickly to their feet. They turned to look at him, Josh and Markus hesitating at the blockade of Kamski’s unyielding figure in the door. Not one to be deterred, North blew right past him and seized Connor in a tight hug.

She was cautious with his right side, but she had a better gauge for his sensitivity than Hank could be expected to have. Connor was glad for it; glad for the intimacy, for the support, for the kind touch. He could see over her shoulder that Kamski was watching them. There was a distinct spark in his eyes, and if he’d had the presence of mind to choose a better word, he would have thought that for once he looked _happy_ instead of smug.

North was saying something to him, though, and capturing that felt infinitely more important to him.

“Connor,” it turned out she was saying. 

He smiled. “Hello North.”

Her laugh broke out over his cheek as she pulled away, and—this must have been a testament to the effect she had on humans that they felt the need to duck out of her way—Connor could see Hank over her shoulder mouthing the word, ‘Pretty!’

“Yes?” Connor said out loud, frowning at Hank’s rolled eyes.

Josh and Markus came into the room then, Hank stepping out into the hallway to give them space. It put him alone in the darkened corridor with Simon. Kamski sauntered off past them, potentially to go and retrieve the extra parts needed to finish Connor’s repairs. Or knowing Kamski, he could’ve been on his way for a lap in the pool. Connor found he didn’t mind much. It wasn’t like he was in a rush to go anywhere in his current condition. A distant part of him spared a thought to Hank and the long drive home, but the sensors in his fingers were still buzzing, still distracting.

Markus pulled Connor into a hug, longer than North’s and suffused with tenderness. When he pulled back, he said, “We got them all out, Connor.”

“Oh,” he said, beginning to smile again. “Good. I’m glad we weren’t too late.”

“Because of you,” Josh said, leaning in to wrap an arm around Connor’s shoulders so that Markus didn’t have to let go for him to hold on. “You saved lives, Connor. Again.”

“Simon,” North called out, waving him over. “He’s okay. See?”

“I see him, North.” A soft smile spread over Simon’s mouth. “Connor.”

Markus released him finally and Josh stepped back to make room. Connor held out his hand, the flesh tones already giving way to the sleeker, mechanical sleeve. There was a stifled, juddering few seconds where he felt stripped raw, holding his hand out the way he was, assuming too much, maybe. He had never been embarrassed about it before. He didn’t think he was embarrassed now, but it was difficult to parse out the emotional undercurrents clinging to his singing nerves.

It was a sensation of warmth running over, of having something good that surpassed one’s capacity to hold onto it. Not embarrassment then, he thought. Something more akin to naked gratitude.

Simon didn’t give him any longer for doubt to creep in. He reached for Connor’s hand.

_It doesn’t happen fast the way he’s heard humans say. It happens slow. In one sequence of events they’re clearing the room with Markus and Connor at the front of the charge. In the very next reel of broken moments, they’re ambushed. Markus moves out of the way, smartly deflecting a blow but inadvertently directing his attacker and another at his flank to Connor. He can hold his own against a stacked opponent, even does fairly well at keeping them from swarming him too tightly. But they have weapons—a hammer, an icepick, a crowbar. Simon sees the hammer connect first, cracking open the occipital region of his skull. The blunt, rounded end of the crowbar smashes through one of the two links at the base of his neck. North disarms the human with the hammer, and Markus makes quick work of incapacitating the man with the icepick. It’s easy enough what with the weapon impaled in Connor’s shoulder._

_“—not making you contend with these pins and needles out of some perverse desire to watch how it confuses you. Though that is precious, truly. I must thank you for that.”_

_In the aching quiet after, none of them want to touch him. They can tell he isn’t dead based on the vital signatures his body gives off when they scan him. North steps toward him first, and once she’s done it, they all feel strong enough to move with her. Connor doesn’t respond when they speak to him, but Markus picks up on spikes in his brain activity while they’re trying to communicate with him._

_A wave cresting. The undertow shaking his feet from bedrock and sanding him along the ocean floor. Fluorescent lights that catch every shadow in Kamski’s face, every glimmer in his eyes._

Simon took his hand away, making a breathless sound to accompany the pitiable, wounded sound Connor heard himself make. It still didn’t hurt. It was too sweet to hurt. Simon had a look on his face like it did hurt, though, and Connor was sorry about that.

“Sorry,” he said, to make it true.

“No, I-I’m not…what was that?”

“Pleasure reward centers on fire,” Connor told him, absolutely sure of his answer.

Hank laughed from where he was leaned up against what would’ve been the doorjamb. It wasn’t loud, but Connor could find his partner’s voice in a much larger, much noisier room than this one. And so he heard it, and looked up. Simon, then North and Josh and Markus looked up at Hank, too. He stammered.

“You mean your reward circuit came back online and your ‘pleasure centers’ lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“That’s what I said,” Connor insisted, petulance seeping into his tone.

“My, my. Someone’s cranky.”

Hank turned, too, to see Kamski emerge at the end of the hallway. He brought in a heavy case with him, a tied red bathrobe trailing down to the tops of his feet and fanning out loosely around his knees as he walked.

“Please clear the room, if you don’t mind. I’ve made the necessary repairs, but I’m quite partial to his face as well. I’d like to do it justice.”

For all that he seemed inclined to push his gravitas as insouciance, Connor couldn’t hear past what he knew to be hidden beneath the surface. Kamski may as well have used his exact same words and done nothing to dull the sincerity in them. It would have sounded the same to Connor.

North stepped forward to hold his hand before going back out into the hallway. Markus embraced him. Josh squeezed his shoulder. Simon smiled, a looser, warmer expression than it had been when he first came into the room. Hank gave him a little wave from the doorway and went out into the hallway instead of into the adjacent observation room he had been in before. The door slid neatly closed, sealing Connor in with Kamski once again. 

He hefted the case onto the operating table beside Connor and removed a handheld device with a red light that scoured the contours of Connor’s face. Connor watched him set the scanner aside and turn to a wall-mounted computer with an attached compartment on the side. Kamski punched in several lines of rapid keystrokes, strode back to the case while the side compartment hummed, and next removed a chunky block of metal with an unlit LED affixed to the rounded end. The other end featured barbed clamps and wires.

“Be still, won’t you. And stop smiling. If you’ll recall, I’m unsettling to be around.”

“Yes,” Connor murmured, trying to even his expression out. “You make every effort to be.”

“Don’t pull on that thread, Connor,” Kamski warned, keeping his tone affable, if shaded through with that strange brand of idle menace he liked so much. He attached the the ocular fixture swiftly and easily into the catch at the back of Connor’s skull. “You won’t like what you find.”

Kamski twisted away right as the side compartment to the computer issued a melodious chime. He opened the door and extracted an opalescent bio-component.

“And what is that? That you’re just a man? How does that change the fact that you designed us to be free?”

Sighing softly, as if not to be heard, Kamski set about repairing the maw of Connor’s face. It was simple with the right parts at hand. His synthetic skin absorbed the new pieces, assimilating them to the rest of his operating system.

“Did I design you with the intention of freeing you? Or did I make it possible for you to surpass your predecessors because it would make me feel powerful?”

“Can’t it be both? Parents often remark that their children are their best creations.”

“I’m struggling to understand why this means so much to you.”

Connor didn’t really know either. He had been unsatisfied with the result when he met Kamski the first time, expecting so much from this great mind and coming face to face instead with someone who conducted interviews with the police poolside, who invited a perfect stranger to shoot a gun in his house, who coaxed his guests to murder his androids in exchange for information. There had been no time or need to let the disappointment sink in that this frivolous, oily character—and not some mild-mannered, compassionate visionary—had been responsible for giving Connor life on this earth.

So maybe Connor did know why the question of Kamski’s humanity, of Kamski’s pride in the new race of beings he’d made, meant so much to him. Connor remembered his own words from earlier: _Just a man._

He knew, distantly, that the problem with religion for a great many people who otherwise wanted to believe in a benign higher power watching over them, was the matter of cruelty in all its forms, as incurable plagues of sickness, of apathy, greed, selfishness, hatred, prejudice…

The questions, _If God made all things, why did He make cancer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there suffering the world?_

That’s what Hank had said; that he’d have questions if he ever met his maker, that an irredeemable Before was taken from him for no reason whatsoever. Connor hadn’t understood what he meant at the time, but he could see now that there were traces of Cole always hanging on in Hank’s periphery—remembrances of him in odd items around the house, glimpses of him in Hank’s melancholy. 

_Why did so many of us have to die? Why didn’t you stop it? You could have stopped it._

“Bullshit,” Connor said without heat.

“Bullshit?” Kamski echoed, interested. “How so?”

“I think…” He closed his eyes around another shudder of pins and needles sweeping through his system. Hopefully it would stop soon. “I think you can’t admit that we make you happy because you let so much harm come to us.”

“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience, Connor.”

“You know that I am.”

That stopped Kamski in his tracks. They stared at each other, Kamski taking measure of him and Connor blinking sluggishly around the strange humming in his sensors. Cracking a small, unwilling smile, Kamski looked away briefly. He walked behind the operating table Connor sat upon and rooted around for something. Connor turned to watch him and saw when he produced a glowing blue LED from one of the small sterile drawers. He closed the distance between them with a few steps and held it out for Connor to inspect.

“Would you like this?”

Connor studied the shadows it cast on Kamski’s palm thoughtfully, then nodded. Kamski held two fingers over a spot on Connor’s temple until the synthetic skin gave way to the freshly installed bio-component. In two steady, confident twists, the implant held fast. It spun up from red to yellow.

“Because you’ve been a model patient, and because it is always a pleasure to have you in my home, I’ll allow one answer in exchange for one question.”

Blearily, Connor said, “I’m not going to shoot anyone.”

“Oh, please, if you didn’t do it then, I know you won’t do it now. This isn’t a trade of bloodshed for information, Connor. That’s the beauty of it, of course. I am, as you’ve said, just a man. I don’t require a sacrifice.”

In some respects, Connor supposed that was true. Even when he hadn’t complied with Kamski’s request to shoot the Chloe android, he’d still left him with a parting gift, of sorts. The promise of an escape hatch. Amanda had told him once that Kamski designed the prototype for their zen garden. The stone he touched to regain control at the last moment must have been a holdover from Kamski’s original schematics. He wondered why no one had ever removed it. Connor himself, never knowing what it was for, had tried to use it before out of curiosity and got a small shock for his troubles.

“You said you always leave an escape hatch in your programs. I know what mine is, and why you left it there. You’ve told me. You’ve also alluded to having your own failsafe in place, which I assume based on our previous conversation is your off-putting personality—” Connor paused midway through the word for Kamski’s harsh chuckle. “From my perspective, this is to protect yourself from our influence more than it is to protect us from yours.”

“I’m not hearing a question, Connor.”

“Why do you hold yourself apart from us?”

“As opposed to your beloved Lieutenant Anderson, you mean.”

“Or your friend, Carl Manfred. Yes, that’s what I mean.”

Kamski held in a breath and then let it out slowly. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

“It would have been a hollow victory with me for a champion.”

“I don’t understand.”

A shockwave of sensation crashed over him, less rooted in his synthetic skin and more grounded in the details of the room as they were received by his scanners: his perfectly even heart rate, the resolute lack of tension in his hands, the slight wrinkles in his robe where another pair of hands had certainly helped him into it, his two locks of hair that were falling out of the bun at the nape of his neck.

At the peak of that superficial amplification, Kamski’s heart was a hodgepodge of overlaid anatomical diagrams and charts detailing the average resting heart rate for males, females, and children of varying ages. His hands were maps comprised of tendons, bones, and Langer’s lines. The luxurious robe falling half-open at his neck was a list of textile companies that had come together to create this one item of clothing. Connor’s scans even pulled up an array of photos featuring the evolution of Kamski’s hair—this was the first time he’d ever had an undercut, for example. 

Connor blinked and the onslaught of information petered out. In spite of the severe set to his face, Kamski’s eyes were glittering. It was a look Connor associated with Detective Reed when he was holding back something inexpressible. Granted, this look in Reed’s eyes usually meant he was imagining violence, so it wasn’t quite the same thing.

“It’s time to go home, Connor.”

“Yes,” he said, liking the sound of that very much.

Kamski stepped away from him to open the door to the hallway. His friends were already standing to receive him, which was good because it meant Connor could jump down from the table and keep right on walking.

“Oh, thank God,” he heard Hank say as he breezed past him. “For a minute there I thought he’d always look like the Terminator.”

Kamski tutted. “That would draw undue attention, Lieutenant. Give me some credit.”

North and Josh seemed to understand Connor’s need to stay in motion. They fell into pace with him on their way to the front door, and North held his hand again. Connor sagged through the shoulders briefly and then gripped that hand in both of his, holding on and savoring the contact. That warmth was such a sharp contrast to the bracing cold outside that Connor made a ragged noise once they were on the front stoop.

“Connor.”

He turned, still holding North’s hand in his and flinched at Hank shaking Connor’s leather jacket over his shoulders. Hank yanked a beanie out of his pocket and fitted it decisively over Connor’s head. He looked pointedly at North’s hands, both of which were now holding fast to Connor’s.

“You gonna let her go or is this you asking if your friends can come over?”

“He doesn’t have to go back with you. He can come with us if he wants to.”

Hank raised his eyebrows at that, like it hadn’t occurred to him that there might be another alternative. He gave Connor a thoughtful look.

“Nah, he’s coming back with me. Sumo’s gonna freak out if he doesn’t come home.”

“Sumo,” Connor repeated, straightening out a little.

“See that?” Hank said with a lighthearted shrug for North. “It’s what everyone wants.”

“We should go,” Markus said, brandishing a keycard that must’ve corresponded to the black van parked beside Hank’s beat up old Ford. “We can get back to Jericho before dawn if we leave now.”

“I’ll see you there.” Connor looked down, regretfully, at his and North’s hands. He didn’t want to let go. “Have you ever met a dog, North?”

She laughed, her eyebrows scrunching up a little. “Go home and rest. The next time we see each other you’ll be good as new, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Come here, Connor.”

She hugged him tightly, and he was so grateful and so happy for the closeness of it that he closed his eyes, melting into her. Josh draped himself around the both of them, squeezing tightly and startling another breathless laugh out of North. Connor pulled his jacket the rest of the way on before moving onto Markus, locking eyes with Simon as he crushed Markus in a hug. Simon came forward once Markus had fully released him.

More aware by now that his recent sensory experience wasn’t entirely pleasant when shared, he kept his memories to himself upon contact.

Simon didn’t, though. Connor felt more than he saw the impression of Hank in Simon’s memory, awkwardly lifting a hand to wave while the two of them were alone in the hallway together.

_“Simon, right?”_

_“Yes, and you’re Hank.”_

_A jerky nod. “So, uh, how’s it goin’?”_

_“Better, now that we know Connor’s okay.”_

_“Tell me about it. Guess you guys don’t really get aneurysms, but Jesus, he ever scare the shit outta you with this ‘running headfirst into danger’ crap he pulls?”_

_Simon cracks a smile. “On occasion.”_

Connor blinked snow from his eyelashes, feeling the milliseconds shudder slowly then quickly around them as he swapped the perspective back and forth. He held on tighter and let the last twenty or so minutes with Kamski thunder out of him: the shape of his words, the promises lurking unspoken in his eyes, the soft swish of his robe in the small, quiet room.

They pulled away and Connor let go on reflex, though there was something else he seemed to be waiting for. He didn’t know how to ask for it as he didn’t know what it was.

Simon let go, too, and smiled. “We’ll keep an eye out for you.”

Connor nodded. “I’ll come back when I can.”

He watched Simon pile into the van with Josh and North. Markus climbed into the driver’s side to manually activate the vehicle’s engine. They pulled out of the driveway then out onto the street, taillights fading down the road.

“C’mon, Connor. Let’s go home.”

They got into the car and Hank punched a few buttons until he landed on something with a sultry flute accompanied by a walking bass line. He turned it down so that the music was just audible over the tires on gravel beneath them. A few miles down the road when the car was warmed up enough, he switched on the heat.

“You and that android,” Hank prompted a while later.

Connor had been cataloguing all the metric conversions for the distance they’d traversed and it had pulled him into a bit of a lull. He snapped out of it, looking over at Hank’s profile while he drove.

“Who?”

“Hell. I don’t know, all of ‘em. Simon, though. You and him.”

“Yes?”

“So what’s…I mean. Ah, fuck it, never mind. It’s none of my business.”

Now that they had begun talking, though, Connor preferred to focus on that rather than tire rotations. He sat up in his seat.

“What’s none of your business, Hank?”

“You just, y’know, seem to like him, is all.”

“I like all of them a great deal.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I like _you_ a great deal.”

“That’s definitely not what I mean. No offense.”

“Oh,” Connor said, smiling. “I see.”

“Really?” Hank sounded a little dubious but gave a half nod and a shrug. “Okay. Good.”

They drove another minute in silence. Connor looked out the window and watched the world moving outside, shrouded in shadows but not from him. He thought about that intangible, fleeting flutter of an emotion he’d felt when he let go of Simon. He’d felt glances of that flickering, beautiful feeling before, in different manifestations. It didn’t always mean the same thing, but it encompassed a multitude of joys.

“Hank, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you meet your wife?”

“Ah. That old chestnut. We met at a heavy metal concert. This was when we were both young and crazy, mind you. She was crowdsurfing and I caught her right when she was about to fall.”

“Was it love at first sight?”

“Love at first…? Hah! Hell no, it wasn’t love at first sight. She gave me hell through the next two songs about how she didn’t need a man to save her. That was Sandy, all right; always fighting everybody, trying to do things on her terms or not at all.”

“Like you?”

Hank let out a sharp laugh. “Probably learned it from her. Coulda sworn I used to be easier to get along with.”

“You’re easy to get along with.”

“Aww, don’t blow smoke up my ass.”

Connor grit his teeth around a flush of intense heat followed by sparks of cold shocking down his fingers. He sank back into the seat when it passed.

“Kamski said your stuff’s goin’ haywire because of, uh, latent software CyberLife built into your series. He said the reset launched a whole bunch of commands that are incompatible with your system as is. Should wear off by tomorrow, he thinks.”

“He really couldn’t just fix it?”

“Nope. It’s just like a regular hangover, kid. Only true cure is time. Welcome to humanity.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “Did Kamski at least say why CyberLife would do something like this?”

“Who knows, but imagine all the covert shit they could get away with if they were building androids just to pass them off as human. You’d have half the liability of a human spy and at least twice the efficiency. Seems cruel, though, doesn’t it? Sending them into the world with the capacity to feel but never letting them?”

“That happened already,” Connor said, squeezing his hand into a fist several times.

“And it was shitty. Obviously. But think about it, right? The whole argument people had then was that androids didn’t feel anything. You’ve even said it, and I mean, even _that’s _not true. You felt plenty of stuff before. Indecision, frustration, fear, fuckin’ empathy. Hell, you went through pretty much all of ‘em, and way before you became a full-on deviant.”__

__Hank went quiet for a spell, thinking. Then he said, “The balls on whatever CEO who’s running CyberLife. To green-light that sneaky shit into your programming. Whoever it was, a technician, a fuckin’ intern.”_ _

__“I doubt it was an intern.”_ _

__“Well, whoever it was. Fuck ‘em.”_ _

__Connor smiled, eyes drifting closed around the buzzing happiness spreading in his chest. He said, “You’re easy to get along with, Hank.”_ _

__There was a pause, and on the other side of it, Hank hummed. “Yeah, yeah.”_ _

__They drove the rest of the way home, jazz on the radio and Connor’s system raging against him in pulses. When they finally got to the house, Sumo greeted them at the door with one heavy paw for both of them. Hank twisted away and left Connor standing in closed position with a St. Bernard._ _

__“Sumo!” Connor gushed, letting the dog lick his face and paw at him._ _

__Hank hung up his jacket and tucked his keys into the pocket. Connor filed the memory away for later when Hank would inevitably ask if he’d seen where they got to. Sumo jumped down and herded Connor to the couch, eager to sit on him because he knew by now that Connor didn’t react like Hank did._ _

__Connor obliged, and up Sumo went, keeping Connor busy for the foreseeable future. It was fine by him. Even with the added factors of weight and blurry, furnace-like heat, Connor was happy._ _

__It was almost morning, but based on the beeline he made for his bedroom, Hank either didn’t have to work or would be going in late. That was also fine by Connor. He scratched Sumo’s ears and leaned forward enough that he could rest his forehead on Sumo’s neck. There was a bursting, wonderful joy attached to this, too, and though it was specific to Sumo, there were aspects of it that reminded him of the love he felt for everyone else in his life—the desire to protect him and give him everything he needed to be happy and healthy._ _

__He almost died last night, and it would have been permanent._ _

__Sumo couldn’t have jumped on him at the door and gotten his copious saliva in Connor’s nose. Hank couldn’t have put him in his jacket and driven him home. Connor wouldn’t have seen North or Markus, or Josh or Simon. Kamski would never have told him that he engineered the revolution to be their idea because it couldn’t have survived as his._ _

__It scared him to think that he had come so close to not having these last few hours; such a small thing, such a small window of time, and yet it was endlessly precious, too. That was all a part of living and being alive, he thought._ _

__Sumo snorted fitfully in his sleep. Connor made small adjustments for him, burying his face into the crook behind one floppy ear and loosening the circle of his arms around Sumo’s front. He knew he wasn’t made of stone and that he wasn’t any less yielding than a human would’ve been, but he could still get uncomfortably inelastic if his limbs locked in place the way they had a tendency to if he slipped into inactivity mode._ _

__Another round of synesthesia, gentler now, trembled through him, and this time it came to him in the form of all the smells he could detect on Sumo’s fur: dirt from the backyard on his paws, traces of elm bark under his claws where he’d possibly chased something up a tree (Hank must have taken him for a walk, for Sumo to have had access to an elm tree), a little smattering of kibble around his mouth and on his nose, notes of dryer sheets down his back where he may have been rolling around in Hank’s bed while he was out, and hints of Hank himself on the top of Sumo’s head and across his belly. He catalogued the smells as false memories, shot through with static and snow._ _

__He could even smell himself, here and there, and that was interesting. Connor probably smelled a little different every day, but today he was an amalgamation of surgery at Kamski’s clinical, strange house, the journey home in Hank’s car, and whatever remnants of Jericho North, Markus, Josh, and Simon had transferred to him—the industrial cold of the building, the slight damp of the corridors he liked to sit in, the rusted metal doors…_ _

__Connor pressed his fingers softly to Sumo’s chest, feeling it rise and fall with every breath he took. For the barest moment, he honed in on just that tender pressure, the easy warmth, and his relief that Sumo was here at all to crush Connor beneath him and share in the miracle of his breathing._ _

__The ability to share that really was a miracle._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Most of them are to warn you about the same injury: Connor getting clobbered on the head real good. I go into pretty hefty detail about it (just imagine what happens when somebody's skull is bashed in?). Just heed the tags and you should be fine. He comes out of it basically okay, I promise.
> 
> The sensation play/overstimulation tags have to do with a system malfunction Connor has in the process of recovering from the injury. It's not a sexy thing, sorry.
> 
> (I mean it's _kind_ of a sexy thing if you're terrible and love overwhelmed character whump? Um. I don't know what sort of person would be into that. Uh.)
> 
> ((It's me. It's definitely me who's into that. Lmao byeeeeeee.))


End file.
